Pictures & Words

The puppies are starting to leave the nest! One was picked up on Wednesday, two on Friday, and another one on Saturday. In addition, two flew out on Saturday for California and upstate NY. That leaves us with only three to take care of, and by this time next week, we'll be down to just one. Stuart (liver male) will be hanging with us until summer—he'll be making his way to Australia in 2010.

I think that family photos are either on Jen's facebook page or up at Sun Devil Curlies. I've got a couple shots from yesterday afternoon (another unseasonably nice day in November!)

It's hard to believe that seven weeks ago, we spent a few hours on a Sunday morning in the vet's office, delivering the black puppies by C-section (the two livers were born naturally). They were so helpless and seemingly fragile as we worked frantically to get them revived and breathing on their own. Well, they're breathing fine today! This has been a really great litter. As I've mentioned so many times before, they're really uniformly good from top to bottom in attitude and behaviors. Everyone likes to retrieve. Everyone checked out the water today (3 inches of water and leaves where our swimming pool was this summer). Everyone is interested in cats. Everyone likes to chase Noah and chew on him.

This was our last full week with the whole crew. They start to leave on Wednesday, and within a couple weeks we'll be down to just one puppy ("Stuart" will be going to Australia next summer). We'll miss these guys—it's been a couple years since we've had puppies around the house, and I've missed the fun and chaos of having them here. But they're ready to go to their new homes—to fill their new owners lives with joy, love, and the occasional puppy bite. For those of you who can't wait, here's another set of pictures on a wonderful November Sunday in Wisconsin.

As they get older, they get stinkier! Jen was gone this weekend, so that gave me plenty of opportunities for some puppy bonding time. Didn't leave me a lot of time to shoot photos, so I cranked off some this evening. This litter has been a ton of fun—very active without any crazies, all have great personalities, all are pretty fearless. While I do have a favorite, I'd be very happy keeping any of these puppies (and I'm also happy to NOT be keeping any of these puppies... :-) ).

They'll be going to some really good homes in a couple weeks. We'll be ready to see them go by then, but we'll miss them terribly when they're gone. There is no better feeling in the world than to sit down in a nice clean puppy pen and be the center of the universe to nine wonderful puppies.